76 VARIETIES OF SHOOTING. 



of reach. In hedgerows, they may be hunted with spaniels 

 or terriers, and shot as they come out; but they generally 

 have holes in the banks, and then soon reach them in safety. 

 When driven to their fastnesses, the ferret is the only re- 

 source; and these animals, after being muzzled, soon drive 

 them either to the gun or into bag-nets placed over the 

 holes. But it is to the covert-shooting of rabbits that I 

 wish to draw attention, that being the only kind of rabbit 

 shooting which is to be considered deserving the attention of 

 the true sportsman, and which, I have already remarked, is 

 really worth it. Rabbits are now much encouraged in large 

 pheasant preserves, partly for the sake of the keepers, whose 

 perquisite they are, but chiefly because they afford food for 

 the foxes preserved for fox hunting, which would otherwise 

 prey upon the pheasants. The keeper feeds foxes when 

 young regularly upon rabbits wounded and left near their 

 earths ; and, consequently, these rabbit-fed animals keep to 

 the same fare, and are thus prevented from interfering with 

 the pleasures of the battue. The keeper continues to shoot 

 a few outlying rabbits round the covert, and those which are 

 thus wounded suffice to keep up the supply for the foxes, in 

 addition to those which the keeper may purposely leave for 

 him, or the fox may himself succeed in laying hold of. When 

 the pheasant season is over, and the foxes also have been 

 thinned, it will be found that the rabbits must be kept down 

 on account of the young crops, which they begin to bite off 

 most cruelly. In February and March, therefore, good spoft 

 is usually afforded by this thinning of the rabbits, several 

 hundred couple being often killed in a single preserve. At 

 this time a great number of rabbits lie above ground, pre- 

 paring for their young, or driven to seek the pleasures of 

 love, or from other causes, of which we, in our ignorance of 

 their language, have not yet fathomed the motive. How- 

 ever, there they are ; and in the springfalls of a large wood 

 they may be found lying in tussocks of grass, or in little 

 bushes. For these the vermin terriers of the keepers are the 

 best dogs, as they hunt them very quietly, yet strongly, and 

 your regular springers or cockers would be utterly spoilt for 

 pheasant or cock if allowed to hunt rabbit. By sending the 

 keeper and his terriers into the wood, the rabbits are driven 



